Tag: Machete

Sometimes it makes utter, inarguable sense to take your franchise to space!

Often it doesn’t!

Our bi-annual Fictionside series heads to the stars with five franchises that did the same, as our fifth anniversary finds us zooming back to Earth!

WE’RE NOT HEADING TO SPACE – WE WERE ALWAYS THERE! As we take a long turn to head back to Earth for our fifth anniversary refit, at the end of our first utterly unique five year mission, Fictionside returns. Having taken in rules of rebooting, the peril of shared universes, and our favourite heroes and villains, we thought it was time to think outside the box.

So this Fictionside, we’re taking a look at five franchises that against all expectations ended up upgrading to a trip to space! It’s a race to the cosmos for genre franchises.

You know how it is, you have a great idea for a film, it makes some money and leads to a sequel. Suddenly you have a threequel, and maybe a prequel. There’s a whole mythology there goddamit, and these sprawling franchises have an inherent, proven genetic weakness: the creep of diminishing returns. If there’s a sure-fire way to dodge that large creative bullet, it’s to head to space. Thought no one in their right mind, ever.

Yet, for many a franchise that’s trying desperately to head to Earth with the will of its fans, from Battlestar Galactica to Alien to Planet of the Apes, there are 50,000 others that go the other way.

Fictionside salutes the almost inevitable cry of, “Sod it, we’ll just set it in space”. And as usual, there’s a Jokerside-slant. After all, the fun isn’t in which franchises headed to space, but the amount of films it took.

1. Dracula 3000 (2004)

Number of films to get to space: 1 (quite unbelievably this is neither a direct sequel to Dracula 2000, not the 3,000th Dracula film)

There are many inherently brilliant characteristics that Bram Stoker’s Dracula cemented into the century old vampire myth, that have been submitted for countless planning applications over the past century and a quarter. The gifts of metamorphosis and zoolingualism, gravity defiance, immortality and super strength, even when in the form of a little old man with white hair – fine moustache or not. Then there’s vulnerability to stakes, reflections, faith symbols, particularly crucifixes and – oh yes, sunlight. So where better to put one of the fanged cornerstones of gothic horror, and count of modern horror, than a place where it’s bloody hard to hide from the sun.

Following 200’s, er, Dracula 2000, with its intriguing but mildly undermining link to the New Testament, 3000 can at least be thanked for steering above the ever-increasing trend to expand the novel’s love concept (See the bizarre Dracula Untold a decade later). While pulling in the Demeter, it’s not the Russian vessel adrift in the thrashing seas outside Port Whitby, but a freighter floating in space, the crew dead, the cargo rather mass-coffin shaped. Thank the garlic that it’s discovered by scavenger Captain Van Helsing. This entry is clearly an early cheat as a non-franchise film (it didn’t spawn on, say what?), and the fact the central character even rejects his own film’s title by being Count Orlock (F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu clearly a far greater pointer to the stars than any other Dracula film).

But kicks of this list with its nice round ‘one’, and because we really love Dracula. (there’s no Frankenstein on this list, but later on there sure may be a film that feels like it…). The odds on Dracula heading to space were always short, and this proves it deserves a minimal stake. Continue reading “Fictionside 105: When Franchises Head to Space!”